A Quiet Place: Day One

One of the theoretical benefits of a prequel is not being beholden to the previously established narrative, yet so many limit themselves anyways. They want to go more in depth on some minor part of the existing story, which sounds reasonable. But that means they're required to hit specific beats, explain certain details or events, and feel pressured to insert elements which don't serve their story but call back to the original. All of this we saw most recently with Furiosa, which leaned so hard on what was set up in Fury Road that many have been contending it's more satisfying to watch the prequel first, in order to reduce how derivative and referential it feels.

As such, I was intending to skip this one. A Quiet Place managed to pass me by, and I was expecting Day One to fall into all the normal traps to make the earlier two films required viewing. However, after hearing for a week that it was more in line with the approach of The First Omen, and with my adoration of director Michael Sarnoski's debut Pig, I decided to add it to my trip to see MaXXXine. And I'm glad I did.

When I think of a movie with the tagline "Hear how it all began", I immediately expect a bunch of exposition about where the aliens came from or how we tried to fight back or experience the journey of humanity driven into hiding. Instead, Day One is an incredibly personal story, following Sam (Lupita Nyong'o) as she quests to get a slice of pizza from Patsy's in Harlem. She persists even after aliens land in Manhattan, slaughtering people and forcing a detonation of the bridges and evacuation of the island. Sam is a cancer patient living in hospice, and only got to the city for a "field trip". As she sees it, her life is already over. What's it matter where she is when the invaders get her?

Of course, the drama comes when she meets up with Eric (Joseph Quinn), a law student in shock after the attack who begins following her, as he has no idea what else to do. The aliens' super-hearing makes conversation all but impossible, but a pit stop at her apartment deepens their connection as he learns more about who she was and who she is now, and a thunderstorm gives them cover to talk briefly in hushed tones. No longer is she trying to shoo him away, she's glad for his company despite the world falling apart around them. Sometimes, it's just enough that someone else is there, ya know?

Sam is a fascinating character to be the protagonist of a horror film. She's uninterested in what's happening around her until it directly impacts her goals. She has no desire to get off the island, no thoughts of survival. Life has already played its hand, and she's going to lose any day now. What does the threat of death mean to the walking dead? It's made her bitter and distant, caused her to lash out, with no desire to come back. However, Eric's presence shows us that she's still in there somewhere. Even that she's never quite been as gone as she's let on: when he has a panic attack later, she's able to effectively guide him through bringing it under control, something she presumably learned from watching nurse Reuben (Alex Wolff) back at the facility and Henri (Djimon Hounsou) when the attack first hit.

The resulting film meditates on death metaphorical and literal. The death of a world, of a city, of a person, of familial ties, of one's spirit. What does it take to bring someone back from that? Is it worthwhile? What is your obligation to help save someone else, especially if you can't save yourself?

Of course, this applies in a less immediate sense to the experience of being alive in 2024. Their apocalypse evokes our own deepening climate catastrophe, further reinforced by their journey through flooded subway tunnels. Sam's deapir mirrors the feeling of watching authoritarianism continuing to make gains in the West. It's all too easy to feel like giving up and retreating into our own little bubbles. But in such dire times, we still have each other. It may seem trite, but somehow watching Sam's very deliberate and justifiable withdrawal from a life that's been unkind cracked simply by the presence of another person really works. There's no fighting for the future, or even for her beloved cat Frodo. She doesn't come to particularly care for Eric, and their eventual inevitable separation is not framed as bittersweet. She's simply compelled to help him much to her own surprise, for no reason other than he needs it. And I find that beautiful.

Notably, Sarnoski doesn't seek to explain the time between Day One and the first film. He demonstrates little interest in the aliens, instead using them devices for tension, driving a few set pieces to get our hearts racing and to move the protagonists from one spot to another. Additionally, their presence forces the film to be very visual-first, with only the addition of sound design to tell the story. In order to give the characters cover to talk, he devises a few clever situations, none of which he reuses. Even then, they must keep it to a whisper, as one mistake means they're dead without having reached Patsy's. The use of a thunderstorm is especially effective across a number of dimensions, making for some of the best scenes of the film.

Nyong'o and Quinn do an excellent job capturing all of this nuance and messiness while barely being able to say a word. They admirably pull off an even more difficult form of the already tricky two-hander. Aided by impeccable sound design and a world that is well thought out in just how bleak it is, this summer blockbuster manages to tell an incredibly human story with aplomb.